Boundary Road Brewery is no different from other start-up craft breweries. They care to use local ingredients, appeal to local consumers tastes and have minimal marketing and advertising budgets. Standing out and creating a point of difference is key to being noticed in the fragmented craft beer industry. So began a tremendous social media experiment.

The brand empowered consumers and crowdsourced the R&D department to them. Local consumers helped taste beer and make important decision for the brand. They ensured quality consumers by filtering out non qualified beer connoisseurs with a short quiz about beer. It tested their knowledge of the brewing process along with general knowledge about beer. In the end, 999 testers were to decide “The Chosen” beer of choice.

“We want to hear from true Kiwi beer lovers to let us know how they want The Chosen One to taste,” explained Marketing Manager Ben Shaw “however they like their brew to be crafted, we want them to decide.”

They connected the process to a mini site (http://thechosenone.co.nz/), leveraged their facebook page an encouraged consumers to like their page in order to participate and amplified their campaign using twitter.

It appears Boundary Road brewery opted to gain attraction of its fans. The brewery enlisted the help of soon to be brand advocates, listened to their voice in choosing the next beer and incentivised them to vote on their favorite brew. Before even going into production, Boundary Road Brewery knew they would have a successful product launch. Tasters were rewarded with production of the most popular beer and a cash prize of $6,000 to one taster who voted.

Showing their appreciation, Boundary Road Brewery took out billboard and print space to thank all 999 tasters.

Social media is a powerful tool that craft breweries are tapping into. While their marketing budgets are limited, their creativity for social media campaigns in limitless. For a great read on why breweries should use social media visit an article written by @getcrafted. For the article, click here.